


Russian Lullabies

by PurpleMango



Series: The Process of Building A Home [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, Natasha Romanov Backstory, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not Happy, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 06:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16080605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMango/pseuds/PurpleMango
Summary: Natalia is one of 26 girls with the Widow program.She's obedient and malleable, easily the best candidate of the group.But then the Winter Soldier shows up, and she gets attached.Everyone knows attachment is futile.





	1. Meeting the Winter Soldier

Natalia was afraid of the Winter Soldier at first. 

All the girls were.

None of them showed it, or dared say a word about it, but they all knew the others were too.

The Soldier was twice the height of the tallest girl, face so painfully blank, with eyes that could make even Madame flinch. Natalia had seen it, Madame’s face when the Winter Soldier walked too close to her.

And that didn’t lessen her fears.

But the Soldier wasn’t mean, like the other men that beat them until they couldn’t walk.

He was just... robotic.  He would fight them, never surprised, never showing any emotion or weakness.

It made Natalia feel sick.

So when they passed out bread during the break in training, all the girls sitting on the other side of the room of the Soldier, who was staring at them, Natalia stood up slowly and started to walk towards the man. The other girls tried to grab at her, to keep her from going over, but Natalia kept on walking.

Blank brown eyes watched her, but the Soldier didn’t seem to care what she did as long as she didn’t disobey the rules.

No talking, fighting, or trying to escape.

She tore a piece of bread off, holding it out in her smaller hand.

The man just stared at it. 

They both waited for the other to do something.

Eventually Natalia got imateint, grabbing the man’s face and shoving the bread in his mouth.

The other girls gasped.

The man just blinked, before the first emotion she’d seen from him flickered into his brown eyes: Amusement. And then he was chewing the bread and swallowing.

Natalia nodded once, sitting down next to the man.

 

The Winter Soldier, Natalia decided, was a big marionette. With strings being pulled by many different people, he had no way to move on his own.

So she gave him a way to move on his own. 

Well, forced it on him was probably more like it.

There were no rules against the girls touching the Soldier, only that he couldn’t engage them unless in battle or if they broke the rules. So she put bread in his mouth, played with his hair, and sometimes even laid her head in his lap.

The other girls saw this and thought she was insane, but she saw the emotions flash through those brown eyes. Amusement, longing, surprise.

 

But then one day they were in the middle of fighting, and she made a mistake. The Soldier's handler gave the command to punish her, and she braced for the impact, only to find it didn't come.

Blinking, she looked up, to find those brown eyes with only one emotion, painfully clear on his face. 

Anger.

And then he turned, looking at the handler. “Нет.” 

The handler pressed something, and then men were rushing in, and the Soldier was fighting. He moved like a wild animal, fighting until they finally subdued him.

Madame B clamped a cold bony hand down on Natalia’s shoulder. “Come. You will see why the Soldier will never be yours.”

And Natalia watched as the Soldier was strapped into a metal chair as he thrashed. A man shoved a leather strap in his mouth and a contraption was coming down on his head.

Then the Winter Soldier started to scream, and Madame was looking down at Natalia. “You would not want the Soldier to suffer again, would you?”

Natalia shook her head. 

“Then do not engage him.” 

Then Natalia was led back to the training room, where a different man beat her to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Нет- no


	2. Remember Me?

The next time she saw the Soldier, his brown eyes were blank, dead as they sweaped over her.

This time she stayed away, kept her distance and her bread to herself.

They were in the middle of break, bread being eaten silently, when the Winter Soldier blinked and looked straight at her.

Natalia paused, unsure, before pointing to the bread. The man gave the tiniest of nods and Natalia smiled. 

She didn’t dare touch the man this time around, only putting pieces of her food on his leg for him to eat. She didn’t touch him and yet, when he was ordered to hurt her, he paused again. 

She gave him a slight nod, and she saw a new flurry of emotions appear in his eyes as he dislocated her shoulder. 

Guilt. Remorse. Regret.

 

But eventually the Soldier refused to hurt her, and she followed after the men as they dragged him away, but this time he fought harder, stronger.

It didn’t look like they were going to control him, and Natalia felt Madame’s hand on her shoulder tighten. “Use his weakness against him. Your first test.”

Natalia knew that she’d be no good the the Soldier dead, so she calmly placed herself infront of one of the man’s punches, and he stopped dead. “Why, Любимая?”

The man’s voice was accented weirdly, and the mix of American and Russian startled her for a half-second, but she pushed the information to the back of her brain, shaking her head. She glanced at Madame, knowing she wasn’t allowed to speak, before singing a soft Russian lullaby that was almost ingrained in her brain. The man seemed to slump, and she watched as the men started forward.

She stopped and the Soldier seemed to come to his senses, tensing and throwing one of the men across the room.

Hastily, she started singing again, and the brown eyes watched her as the soldier was led back to the chair, clamped in.

This time, when he started screaming, Natalia felt it like a knife to the gut.

The Soldier didn’t come back for a long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Любимая- favorite/ darling


	3. I Remember You

Natalia was just starting training with the other girls instead of the handlers when the Solder came back. His hair was longer, the bags under his eyes more pronounced.

The tallest girl was now up to his shoulder (not that Natalia was particularly tall).

Natalia refused to go anywhere near him, to even look at him. She refused to be used to make him suffer again.

When they got paired up to fight she would stand there, let him beat her into the ground. The guilt ebbed away with every punch that landed. The handlers stopped letting him fight her.

The Soldier approached her this time, looming over where she was sat alone in the corner. “I know you.”

She hated that american accent, the way it was familiar no matter that she’d only heard it twice. Natalia didn’t look up. They were training in manipulation, so they were allowed to speak, to insult to tear at the other girls.

“No.” Her American was jilted, still accented with Russian. “You know nothing. You are nothing.”

“I know you.”

She glared up at the man. “Does not stop you from hitting me.”

Dark eyes flashed with both amusement and irritation and his voice lowered into something deeper, drawled out. “Don’t particularly feel like going to the chair again Sweetheart.”

Natalia watched him silently as he sat down next to her, his frame twice hers.

“Wished you’d fight back.”

She ignored him and he slipped back into silence.

 

It was weeks later when an alarm went off, and the Soldier was grabbing her, trying to drag her down the corridor. “Come on!”

“No!” Natalia tried to grab something, to stop the man from getting himself hurt more, but she was thrown over his shoulder as he ran.

He fought his way out of the compound, and they were in a nearby town when the Soldier finally put her down. “What the hell Doll! I’m trying to get us free!”

“Идиот!” She was angry now, tears threatening to well up in her eyes. “You will get put in that chair again!”

“SO?”

“I will not cause you pain, Мудак!” She felt a tear escape and flinched, waiting for the reprimand.

“Извините, возлюбленные.”  The soldier’s voice was regretful, saddened. “I forget you have to remember… but we will not be caught. I will not allow it.”

 

The Soldier kept his promise… kind of.

He fought harder than before when they were found, but eventually Madame told him Natalia would be killed if he didn’t come in, and then told Natalia she’d never see him again if she didn’t put him in the chair.

This time, she had to strap him down herself, murmuring soft apologies under her breath as she did.

And as he screamed, Natalia felt her heart break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Идиот- idiot  
> Мудак- Asshole  
> Извините, возлюбленные- sorry beloved


	4. Chapter 4

It was even less time before the Soldier found her the next time.

And this time she was more adamant in her refusal to have anything to do with him.

But the girls were allowed to touch now, being taught to use their bodies as a weapon, and the Soldier would run calloused hands over her hair and shoulders whenever he could, like the touch grounded him.

She was weak. So weak to him.

And eventually she was sitting pressed up against him whenever she could be.

This time when he was fighting off people, she stood calmly, letting Madame press a gun to her temple. “Soldier. Stand down."

The Soldier’s eyes were afraid, angry, worried, and a million different emotions when he saw, freezing. “Fight!” He hissed at her.

“Sorry возлюбленная. I can't.” Her English was without even a hint of a Russian accent.

Natalia was the one being led away this time, the Soldier watching with dark eyes as she calmly sat down in the metal chair they both hated so much, letting the people in white strap her down.

“Sorry.” And then the strap was put in her mouth and she heard screams as the machine turned on, barely registering it was her before everything went black.

 

The Soldier was dangerous and Natalia stayed away from him.

They never sparred together, but Natasha was fine with that. The man’s dark eyes left her unnerved, like he could see too much of her.

And when the man tried to touch her shoulder, she broke his hand, eyes full of fire.

From then on the man stayed far away from her.

When he didn’t show up one day, Madame told them the Soldier was not needed by them anymore, and Natalia felt her heart twist.

But when she tried to talk to Madame about why the Soldier haunted her dreams like a vengeful ghost, soft words and touches lingering in her brain, she found herself getting strapped into a cold metal chair.

Natalia screamed as her brain was wiped.  


Natasha Romanov woke up panting and Clint Barton immediately moved across the jet to her side. “Nat? You okay? You got a pretty bad head wound in that last fight.”

She blinked, and upon looking into the archer’s sea green eyes, found herself wishing for the first time that they were brown. “Yeah- Yeah it’s just a memory…”

Clint frowned. “What about?”

“It was nothing.” Natasha paused, before smiling and shaking her head. “A dream about a soldier.”

And the man who had barely known her for two months nodded, joining Coulson in the cockpit.

Natasha clutched at her heart as it twisted in her chest. “ _My_ Soldier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> возлюбленная- beloved


End file.
